Another delay for Tulip Grove renovation project

John McNamara / Capital Gazette

Tulip Grove Elementary School remains vacant - more than year after renovations were initially scheduled to begin. In the meantime, students have been attending classes at the old Meadowbrook Elementary School.

Tulip Grove Elementary School remains vacant - more than year after renovations were initially scheduled to begin. In the meantime, students have been attending classes at the old Meadowbrook Elementary School. (John McNamara / Capital Gazette)

On the night the Prince George's County Board of Education was scheduled to approve the construction contract to revitalize Tulip Grove Elementary, the item was pulled from the agenda because of problems with the bidding process.

That action is the latest in a series of delays that have plagued the project. Initially, students and teachers were asked to re-locate to the old Meadowbrook Elementary building in 2014 for two years while construction took place at Tulip Grove. They were supposed to return to a new and improved Tulip Grove when school started last week.

However, personnel changes and problems with plans and permitting have prevented any work being done at the Tulip Grove site. Now the school community is being asked to endure another delay.

Wesley Watts, the chief operating officer for the school system, wrote in an e-mail that there were "complications" with the bid process. One of the companies that lost out to the Tuckman-Barbee Construction Company of Upper Marlboro, objected to the way the bidding was conducted. So, officials decided to start the process of requesting and reviewing bids all over again.

"Apparently, we have a company that has challenged the process, so the school system is putting (the project) back up for bid," said school board member Verjeana Jacobs, whose district includes Bowie. "But once again, that's inexcusable. There's a process internally to make sure the bidding goes right ... This is another unfortunate delay.

"It's almost useless to talk about it because there's nothing else the administration can say to our families right now about this project. I'm disappointed for them. I feel helpless in so many ways because I've been pushing from my end and it's just one (thing) after another."

Watts said this school officials were working on a new request for bids and a new estimated timeline for the posting of a notice, and the review and approval of bids. That timeline is expected to be finalized next week

As recently as May, Will Smith — the county's project manager for the Tulip Grove improvement project — told a group of parents that the bid would be approved in June and construction would begin in July. Smith estimated that the renovation would take about 16 months and would be completed in late 2017. That timeline is now obsolete.

At that meeting, parents and teachers argued against making a mid-year move into the refurbished school. They said they preferred to move in at the start of the 2018-19 school year – two full years later than expected, four full years after they vacated Tulip Grove.

Even though moving into a rebuilt Tulip Grove for the start of the 2018-19 school year remains a possibility, members of the school's community have grown weary of the all the delays.

"We should have started this school year ... in a newly renovated and expanded building," Lori Morrow, a former president of the Tulip Grove PTA, told the board at last week's meeting. "Instead, there have been delays at every single phase of the project. I assume that removing approval of the construction contract for the second month in a row signals additional delays.

"I find it hard to believe that these ongoing issues are because of a single individual or that this project simply suffers from bad luck. It strikes me as an ongoing systemic problem in the way the school system does business."

Kevin Maxwell, the head of the county school system, acknowledged in a letter to one parent last summer that there was "an initial over-promise of an achievable schedule."

The departure of the project manager for the Tulip Grove renovation created further delays before a new one was assigned, Maxwell wrote.

The renovation of Tulip Grove, which is expected to cost about $23 million, will add more than 15,000 sq. ft. to the 42,275 sq. ft. building. Among the improvements planned are a new gymnasium, science rooms and computer labs.

But members of the school community wonder when they'll see a finished product.

"Public education should not be this challenging for us," Morrow told the board during the public comment portion of last week's meeting. "Parents should not have to follow every phase of a ... project to assure proper management. Nor should they have to fight to make sure children are dropped off at the correct bus stop, or registered for the correct classes or have adequate resources at our schools. We should not have to fight this hard to make sure our children continue to be safe in schools. Accountability, responsibility and transparency need to be more than words that are repeated every time every time PGCPS winds up in the news."